The Development of the Rock Musical free essay sample

To provide an overview of the scope of the genre of rock opera, will briefly discuss some of the most renowned works. It is usually the British rock band The Who that is credited with releasing the first rock opera ever (in 1969), Tommy. It was partly inspired by the Beetles 1967 concept album SST. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had already experimented with alternatives to the simple, single-oriented approach to recording Alps. Interestingly, as far as productivity is concerned, this genre reached its peak in the late sass and early sass in England 0 at a time hen rock and pop musicians were keen on experimenting with new musical forms and contents, and when society in Europe was, after the highly active sass in the United States, still very much interested in musical treatments of contemporary problems and hardships.The Whos rock opera follow-up to Tommy, Quadraphonic, was released in 1973; from 1969 to 1 975, another British rock band, the Kinks, released four rock operas: Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire (1 969), preservation (1 973), soap opera (1975), and Schoolboys in Disgrace (1975). We will write a custom essay sample on The Development of the Rock Musical or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Jotter Tulles front man Ian Anderson also experimented with the rock opera format in the 1 9705, contributing Thick as a Bank(1 972), A passion Play(1973), and TOO Old to Rockville: -ROR young to Die(1 976).Probably the last rock opera to come out of England was Pink Floods legendary double album The Wall in late 1979. The rock operas mentioned deal primarily with the problems of young, mainly working-class people in England, or with the role and image of rock musicians in society. Quadraphonic, for example, depicts the emotional emptiness, frustration, anger, rebellion, of an ultimate Who fan who belongs to a cool motorcycle nag, the Moods. He revolts against his parents, his boss, and any kind of alliance with ordinary peoples lives, their small pleasures and drama. The teenage hero, Jimmy has a problem with authority in general, but in the end he comes to realize that even his cool clique is dominated by the same relentless, inhumane rules and laws as the rest of society; the only difference seems to be the fashionable clothes the Moods are wearing and the trendy music they are listening to. Disillusioned he rides his motorcycle off the cliffs into the sea. The Kinks operas also deal with flashbacks. Schoolboys in Disgrace, for example, is a nostalgic trip through childhood, reviving sass rockabilly.It is a series of vignettes rather than an actual story, telling about a naughty schoolboy and his gang, who are always playing tricks on their teachers and bullying their schoolmates, until one day, after another incident, the schools principal decides to disgrace the boy and his gang in front of the whole school. This is the turning point in the boys life: he realizes that people in authority will always be there to kick him down, that the Disesta blishment will always put him in his place. Arthur, obviously a pun on the historically laden theme of King Arthur, was the Kinks most successful and critically acclaimed rock opera. It depicts the story of an ordinary London man who has spent most of his life on his knees, laying carpets, who is now retired, owns a nice little house in suburbia and leads a small life, numbed by the horrors of World War II and English bureaucracy. Now having reached the final stages of his unimportant life, Arthur reminisces and starts to question the meaning of his life, in which he has more often than not been treated Daly and looked down on, lost a son in the war and raised another one who has become a frustrated young man.Pink Floods The Wall is one of the most successful albums in rock history, topping the United States album chart for fifteen weeks in 1 980 and spanning off the hit single Another Brick in the Wall (Part which remained at No. 1 on the United States singles chart for four weeks. In the 1 9805 The Wall was made into a movie directed by Alan Parker and starring Bob Gelded in the lead role as Pink. Pink Floyd took The Wall on tour, with the most famous, if not c omplete performance taking place n Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.The Wall is a double album about a fictional, emotionally crippled, depressed rock star, Pink, who is unable to cope with the pressures of life and therefore builds a wall around him. The wall is obviously a metaphor for his psychological isolation, for the barrier he creates to distance himself from his pain. As parts of his life spin out of control, the wall grows and Pink ultimately blames everyone, particularly women, for his incapability to deal with his neuroses. The origins of his deplorable state is illustrated by flashbacks in individual songs, such asPinks childhood memories of his fathers death in World War II (Another Brick in the Wall [Part his overprotective mother (Mother), the repressive school system, and his fascination with and fear of sex (Young Lust). When his record company uses drugs to get him to perform, his onstage persona is transformed into a homophobic fascist. In the albums last song, The Trial, Pink finally faces himself, mentally prosecutes himself, and the wall comes tumbling down. On the musical plane, the opera mirrors the fragmentary presentation of the story, seamlessly blending melodic reagents, sound effects, and larger musi cal numbers (cuff. The Wall: Pink Floyd). In the end, Pink 0 very much like Jimmy in Quadraphonic L] is disillusioned by his success, feels trapped by fame and wounded by his failed relationships; salvation through rock music does not take place. As we have seen with the works discussed above, the interest in hard-core rock opera in the sass can most directly be attributed to sociological causes. If we now take a closer look at Tommy, probably the most famous rock opera, we will encounter some of the key factors and mechanisms that are at play in rock peer, its production, and its reception in general.Tommy was written by Pete Townsend, leading member of the British rock band The Who, and was first released as a double concept album on 23 May 1969 D at a time when England was lurching from crisis to crisis, shaken by an extremely weak economy, a high unemployment rate, high inflation, strikes, and social friction. The ALP became a huge hit for the band, climbing up to No. 4 in the United States album charts (staying on the charts for forty-seven weeks) and to No. 2 in the United Kingdom. By 1 993, the band had sold two lion copies Of the album in the United States alone. Pinball Wizard was released as a single and reached No. 4 and No. 5 in the united Kingdom and United States respectively. Tommy is set in England from the sass to the sass and tells the story of a boy who is traumatized by childhood experiences. As a small child Tommy witnesses his father, believed missing in World War II, return from captivity and kill his mothers lover. As a result the boy becomes blind, deaf and dumb, and is subjected to psychological, medical and sexual abuse by his family and doctors. Although the story is operatic, the means of expression on the musical plane are reminiscent of an oratorio. All four members of The Who sing for much of the time, no one singer portraying any one character. However, The Whos pure working-class style rockabilly in part fails to generate and detail the emotions found in the libretto, and to some extent lacks musical originality and innovation. Hence, the Tommy score doesnt seem to have a particularly strong personality of its own. In that, the music explicitly reflects working-class ideals and can be seen as successfully underscoring the libretto.It is a one-dimensional world that is portrayed in the story, so the rather one-dimensional music effectively describes the characters lives. It obviously works best in the depiction of Tommys frustrations and aggressions, possibly because rock music is traditionally associated with those emotions and notions. The Indenture, an instrumental number reminiscent in its function within the rock opera of an intermezzo in classical opera, for example, offers very exciting and stimulating music describing Tommys acid trip. The Who performed the rock peer non-stop for nearly two years, to rave reviews especially in England and the United States.Their live shows attracted a vast new audience who was captured and fascinated by the rock theater-like performances. The Who had gone from a Designing band to an Album band, had won critical acclaim and credibility, although the BBC and various rock radio stations in the United States had banned the album for its daring content from the onset. The Who also became the first rock band ever to perform their rock opera at the Metropolitan Opera in New York( June 7 1970). They went on to perform it in peer houses in Canada and Germany.Soon Tommy took on a life of its own: it was adapted for a ballet, an orchestral pop album performed by the London Symphony Orc hestra (1 972), In the past three decades the rock opera has repeatedly been revived, by The Who themselves in concert performances as well as in theater performances of various musical versions, frequently staged and produced by Townsend himself. With its quality rock music and the tale of lust, LSI, rebellion, sadism, and retribution, Tommy perfectly captures the sass spirit, and in that Tommy is very much representative of rock operas in general.